The 2026 Nobel Prize season opened on Monday with the Medicine Prize being awarded to three scientists working on the mechanisms the brain uses to switch on, or off, the activity of individual nerve cells.
Karl Deisseroth, 54, Peter Hegemann, 71, and Georg Nagel, 73, have carried out research into light-gated ion channels and optogenetics. They are based at universities in Germany and the United States.
The Nobel committee lauded their work, writing on social media that the method “is now being...
Eight more companies from countries belonging to Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative have applied to list in Hong Kong, the city’s trade promotion chief has revealed.
Frederick Ma Si-hang, chairman of the Trade Development Council, also said on Monday the city’s economy would benefit from improving China-US ties.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Global Youth Powerhouse Summit, Ma said interest in Hong Kong’s capital markets from Central Asia had surged after a high-level delegation led by Chief...
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced early elections Monday after his government suffered a bruising legislative defeat last week on emergency measures related to the country’s housing crisis.
The vote will be held on November 29.
In recent weeks, Spaniards have demanded solutions from the government over housing affordability, holding protests in cities across the country after public outrage grew over the televised eviction of an 87-year-old woman in Madrid last month.
Right-wing...
A reported plan to station US defence personnel inside Taiwan’s military headquarters would take cooperation from external help into the heart of defence planning, potentially angering Beijing while raising questions over Taipei’s policymaking autonomy and military secrecy.
According to Taiwanese media reports at the weekend, the Pentagon plans to send one official from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defence for Policy and one expert from the Institute for Defence Analyses (IDA) to work on...
Britain’s disgraced former prince, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, has launched a High Court challenge “to quash search warrants” obtained by police ahead of his arrest earlier this year, the judiciary has confirmed.
The London court was set to hold a private hearing on Thursday, the judiciary said in a statement on Monday, as King Charles’ brother challenged Thames Valley Police over searches of his former and current homes on royal estates.
The force arrested the 66-year-old on his birthday on...
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1. ‘No brainer’: growing trend of Chinese tourists booking business-class flights
2. US to deploy NMESIS anti-ship system on Japanese island closest to Taiwan
3. Chinese art takes long march home from US museums
4. Malaysia offers Chinese buyers Singapore’s comfort at prices lower than Thailand
5....
A Laotian citizen deported by the United States to eSwatini under Donald Trump administration’s immigration crackdown was released from a maximum-security prison in the African nation on Sunday after being held there for more than a year, his lawyer said.
Phone Chomsavanh was among five immigrants deported to eSwatini – where he has no ties – in July 2025, in the early days of the Trump administration’s secretive and highly contentious third-country deportation programme.
Chomsavanh’s US-based...
FBI Director Kash Patel is engaged to his country singer girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, the pair announced in a post to X on Sunday evening.
Wilkins, 27, posted a black-and-white photo of herself standing with Patel, 46, flashing her hand in front of them to show off her ring with the caption: “Went and got the law involved”. The two have been dating since before Patel took over as head of the FBI in 2025, when she attended his swearing in.
The country singer and political commentator released her...
Neighbouring China and Vietnam, two manufacturing giants, are building out railways, adding flights and boosting cargo links to leverage their geographic proximity for another boost in trade and tourism that will help both weather pressure from the US.
The two countries set aside political disputes last year to step up economic ties, and analysts said they were now improving both the quality and quantity of transport links.
“Overall, I see the China-Vietnam connectivity story moving from...
Beijing has tightened scrutiny of quantitative trading funds in recent months amid fears they add to market instability. Yet a leading investor believes the future is bright for China’s quant funds, as they are “necessary for a developed economy”.
Seth Huang, the head of Aris Capital, said quant funds had such a clear advantage over retail investors on China’s capital markets that the situation could be described as “a war with some using machine guns and others butcher knives”.
Quant funds have...
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei seems to believe that he, the American artificial intelligence (AI) industry and the United States are the only ones who should have the right to determine the fate of humanity.
While he pays lip service to involving other democracies in AI development, which ones remotely approach the technological capacities of the US and China? Do other non-democratic developing countries not count?
His self-belief is far more dangerous than mere commercial greed. Like Peter Thiel,...
The US Air Force has brought home its bombers stationed at a US-run military airbase in England used to strike Iran following an investigation into a planned terror attack at the RAF Fairford base.
The bombers were redeployed back to their home bases in the United States, according to a Pentagon official who was not authorised to discuss sensitive military movements and spoke on Sunday on condition of anonymity.
Aviation watchers such as the Military Air Tracking Alliance have observed dozens of...
Bosnian Serb nationalist politician Milorad Dodik has declared victory for his party in an election in Bosnia and Herzegovina on Sunday that was shaped by economic pressures, the prospect of the Balkan nation joining the European Union and ethnic tensions that have divided the country since its brutal 1992–95 war.
Dodik is a staunchly pro-Russia politician who, despite not appearing on the ballot, has dominated the campaign and inflamed divisions with separatist rhetoric that have sparked fears...
Iran’s top diplomat insisted on Sunday that there would be no military solution to the United States’ war against the Islamic republic, with talks on ending the conflict apparently at an impasse.
A campaign of heavy bombardment failed to bring a decisive close to the war launched by the US and Israel in late February, and Washington in recent weeks has dialled back military operations in favour of economic pressure.
The main point of contention remains Iran’s attempt to blockade the Strait of...
Brazilians queued to vote on Sunday in the first round of a tight election, following a campaign dominated by corruption scandals, economic anxiety and accusations of US meddling.
The field of 13 candidates has been led by two clear front runners – leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, 80, who is seeking a fourth term, and Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the 45-year-old son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who hopes to return his father’s right-wing movement to power.
A victory for the...
Beijing has been urged to do more to protect its overseas interests with a call for diplomatic engagement to reshape international rules and deeper security cooperation with other countries.
As China’s expanding global footprint comes under pressure from geopolitics and restrictions from the West, a Chinese analysis posted on the Global Security Research social media account has called for a major shift in strategy.
The author was not identified, but the account regularly posts analysis and...
A range of public and private-sector Chinese buyers have acquired a total of 44 small-model Bell helicopters, often for sightseeing and corporate travel. This makes China the vendor’s second biggest market in the Asia-Pacific, with growing demand for more despite safety concerns surrounding rotary-wing aircraft, an aviation services firm said.
China lagged behind only South Korea in the total number of five-seat Bell 505 Jet Ranger X helicopters, according to a statement by the Hong Kong-based...
Taipei’s dilemma over its history during World War II appeared to deepen as Beijing and Washington looked to the Flying Tigers as a source of connection and goodwill during last month’s Xi–Trump summit.
US President Donald Trump’s description of China as an American ally during the war has raised concerns in Taiwan that what could have been a valuable historical connection with the United States ended up benefiting Beijing’s ties with Washington.
The dilemma resurfaced after Trump and Chinese...
A 20-year-old US marine was arrested on Sunday in Japan’s Okinawa prefecture on suspicion of robbing and murdering a local woman, police said.
Davin Ballard stationed at the Futenma Airbase is suspected of killing Anna Yagi, 39, and taking her wallet and backpack in the early hours of Saturday at a hotel in Naha, according to the Okinawa prefectural police. The suspect has denied the charges, they added.
Ballard was seen entering the hotel with Yagi, who was found dead on Saturday morning, the...
Huge billboards on the walls of Tehran mocking US President Donald Trump and depicting American drones under the boot of an Iranian soldier are providing a chronicle of Iran’s war with the United States and Israel.
Khaneh-ye Tarrahan, or Designers’ House, produces the billboards with anti-US messaging for prominent locations in Tehran where they are seen daily by large crowds of passers-by, including the city’s famed Valiasr Square.
The team created a towering portrayal of Trump’s lips sewn and...
Cornell University president Michael Kotlikoff said he was “deeply disturbed” by a student’s 2024 rape allegation that has drawn national outrage.
“My heart aches when I think of what she experienced,” Kotlikoff said in a video message released on Saturday, saying the university must “do everything we can to prevent what happened to Jane Doe” from happening again.
Lawyers for a Jane Doe last month filed a civil lawsuit against the Ivy League university, its leaders, the Chi Phi fraternity, her...
US President Donald Trump shared online the supposed phone number of a Republican US senator on Saturday in an escalating dispute over making daylight saving time permanent.
In a social media post, the president urged people to call a phone number he said belonged to Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican who opposes the Trump-backed Sunshine Protection Act. The act would end the twice-yearly practice of changing clocks by one hour.
Trump says most Americans want more afternoon sunlight,...
Christie’s auctioneer Rupert Banner leans forward with practised showmanship as bidding stalls on a rare Yongzheng bowl near New York’s iconic Rockefeller Centre. He pauses as if willing offers from thin air, scanning dozens of in-person buyers and phone banks connecting with China, London, Texas.
It will be a bad look if the frenzy abates for this delicate peach-decorated bowl highlighted on Christie’s glossy Chinese sale catalogue and online advertising. But bidding soon resumes with a...
North Korea said on Saturday it test-fired an intermediate-range ballistic missile that it claimed has manoeuvrable flight capabilities designed to evade missile defences in South Korea and Japan. The latest test comes amid heightened tensions between the two Koreas over border landmine blasts.
Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, said her brother supervised the test of the missile, which she described as strategic, implying it was designed to deliver nuclear...
As global adoption of the open-source RISC-V chip architecture accelerates, US intellectual property provider MIPS is collaborating with Chinese firms at an unprecedented level, according to a senior executive, highlighting how cross-border cooperation persists despite intense tech rivalry between Washington and Beijing.
MIPS, which was acquired by US chipmaker GlobalFoundries last year, was driving RISC-V standardisation “very closely with China”, chief technology officer Yankin Tanurhan said...